


Our Time of Trial

by SilentKnight



Category: Hannibal (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid, Brief Description of Female Anatomy, Brief slut-shaming, Crack Treated Seriously, Egg Pouches, Flasher!Baby, Haphephobia, M/M, Mer!Verse, Non-Consensual Touching, Perfect eyebrows, Seahorse Anatomy, Seriously If You Can't Handle The Words Bosom or Breast Just Close The Tab, Slave owner!Saul, egg kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2255943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentKnight/pseuds/SilentKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Mermen are expected to stay safe and close to home--especially when there is only one prince. But Baby has never felt broody and longs for adventure and excitement before a full egg pouch ties him down. Part classic Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid, part Hannibal, part Supernatural, and 100% wtf, this is a story about what makes us human--and what doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Under The Sea

**Author's Note:**

> The Little Mermaid, along with other works by Hans Christian Anderson, are in the public domain. Many, MANY passages here are similar to a high school student's remix of a subject's wikipedia page in order to avoid plagiarism while turning a paper in late. This is meant as a tribute and a remix, and the volume of such passages similar to those in his original work decrease greatly in the consecutive chapters.
> 
> Baby Winchester and Saul Lecter DO appear in their TV shows, which a quick look at the Twitter accounts that inspired this story (@TheLecterSaw and @Actual_Impala67) and others will explain in more detail HOW.
> 
> Mer!Verse, like omega!verse, is based around an altered humanoid anatomy. Unlike it, however, it is not mpreg. Like seahorses, mermen carry eggs provided by the female in a pouch on their tail until they are ready to hatch.
> 
> Though this will be mentioned MANY times in this fic, there will be none of that actually depicted.

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects. We must not image that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand. No, indeed; the most singular flowers and plants grow there. Fishes, both large and small, glide between them as birds fly among trees here upon land. In the deepest spot of all stands the castle of the Sea King. Its walls are built of coral, and the long, gothic windows are the clearest amber; here dwell the most singular and beautiful of all of God’s creations.

Here live the merfolk.

The Sea King had been a widower for many years, and his aged mother kept house for him, for it was not seen as proper for a merman to rule alone, king or not. She was a very wise woman, and exceedingly proud of her high birth; on that account she wore twelve oysters on her tail; while others, also of high rank, were only allowed to wear six. She was, however, deserving of very great praise, especially for her care of the little sea-princesses, her grand-daughters. Under her protection these five mermaids played in the great halls of the castle, or among the living flowers that grew out of the wall. The large amber windows were open, and the fish swam in, just as swallows fly into our houses when we open the windows, excepting that the fishes swam up to the princesses, ate out of their hands, and allowed themselves to be stroked. Outside the castle there was a beautiful garden, in which grew bright red and dark blue flowers, stretching for miles over earth of the finest sand. Anywhere beyond that the Sea King’s daughters could venture, so long as they had their grandmother beside them. Not so for the youngest among them, however; for he was a prince and therefore greatly prized by his people and family. They were six beautiful children; but the youngest was the prettiest of them all; his skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and his eyes as blue as the deepest sea; but, like all the others, he had no feet, and his body ended in a fish’s tail. Unlike all the others, faint lines of reversed scales traced a circle on the front of this tail; some day he would carry his heirs. Like sea horses, mermen had egg pouches, and for that reason the little prince was rarely allowed beyond the castle. His role was far too great to the kingdom to risk much beyond the occasional swim through the great castle’s garden. The prince and each of the young princesses had a little plot of ground in the garden, where they might dig and plant as they pleased. One arranged her flower-bed into the form of a whale; another thought it better to make hers like the figure of a little mermaid; but that of the young prince was round like the sun, and contained flowers as red as its rays at sunset. He was a strange child, headstrong and unwilling to accept his homebound life, never outgrowing his nickname Baby. While his sisters would be delighted with the wonderful things which they obtained from exploring the sea, he cared for nothing but his pretty red flowers, like the sun, excepting a beautiful marble statue. It was the representation of a handsome boy, carved out of pure white stone, which had fallen to the bottom of the sea from a wreck. He planted by the statue a rose-colored weeping willow, and lurked for many hours in its shadow. The statue was his prized possession because it came from the world above the sea, and nothing gave him so much pleasure as to hear about that place. He made his old grandmother tell him all she knew of the ships and of the towns, the people and the animals. To him it seemed wonderful and frightening to hear that there was a great expanse over dry land where humans could not travel unlike the depths of the sea, and that many beasts the size of small whales hunted the land like sharks, or that the fishes in the trees could sing so sweetly, that it was quite a pleasure to hear them. His grandmother called the little birds fishes, or he would not have understood her; for he had never seen birds.

“When you have reached your twenty-second year,” said the grand-mother, “you will perhaps be given permission to rise up out of the sea as your sisters shall, to sit on the rocks in the moonlight, while the great ships are sailing by; and then you will see both forests and towns.”

Despite these kind words Baby despaired at ever being given the same freedom of his sisters, or even a shadow of it; not only did he carry the future of his species with him, but he knew that in his twenty-first year he would wed. The drive to mate was strong: it soon would find him with a swollen egg pouch, and the responsibilities that that would bring. The fleeting hope of glimpsing the human world was extinguished quickly within him, followed by a creeping fear that that desire meant something else, which he could only admit to himself in the relative privacy that the weeping willow’s bows offered him and his statue. It had grown splendidly, branches hanging over the stone man, almost down to the blue sands. The shadow had a violet tint, and waved to and fro like the branches; it seemed as if the crown of the tree and the root were at play, and trying to kiss each other. Here he on occasion wept with the fear that he would never grow broody, failing his people. The only comfort he could find during these times came from imagining the human world, and the handsome yet remote expression on the statue’s face.

Even his sisters were unaware of the true extent of the terrible longing that Baby felt.

In the following year, the eldest would be twenty-two: but as each was a year younger than the other, Baby would have to wait five years before he even had the ghost of a chance for his turn to rise up from the bottom of the ocean to come, to see the earth as we do. However, through careful coaxing—and always affecting an air of caring less than he actually did—Baby managed to secure a promise from each of his sisters that they would tell him what they saw on their first visit, and what she thought the most beautiful, the most exciting, for their grandmother could not tell them enough; there were so many things on which he wanted information. The middle sisters readily joined in on the conversation and swore to hold the eldest to her promise, but none yearned for this knowledge so much as Baby, who had the longest time to wait, and who was so headstrong and adventurous even in the face of a life of fatherhood. Many nights he stood by those open windows, looking up through the dark blue water, and watching the fish as they splashed about with their fins and tails. He could see the moon and stars shining faintly; but through the water they looked larger than they do to human eyes. But in truth he was not watching those far-off lights. He was waiting for something like a black cloud to pass between him and them, which might have been a whale swimming over his head, but deep down he knew that at times it was a ship full of human beings, who never imagined that a headstrong little merman was swimming beneath them, eyes wide. Once or twice, in the calm moonlit sea, he swam out of the window, holding out his white hands towards the keel of their ships. A dozen feet, never more. He dared not go further. Baby felt certain that any more and he would be spotted. He never was, at least, not by any resident of the Sea King’s castle. But there were other things in the sea, other creatures of which man has no knowledge.

As soon as the eldest sister was twenty-two, she was allowed to rise to the surface of the ocean. When she came back, she had hundreds of things to talk about and five eager pairs of ears; the most beautiful, she said, was to lie in the moonlight, on a sandback, in the quiet sea, near the coast, and to gaze on a large town nearby, where the lights were twinkling like hundreds of stars; to listen to the sounds of the music, the noise of the carriages, and the voices of human beings, and then to hear the merry bells peal out from the church steeples; and because she could not go near to all those wonderful things, she longed for them more than ever. Oh, did not her younger sisters listen eagerly to all these descriptions? They did indeed, but none so raptly as Baby. And afterwards, when he stood at the open window looking up through the dark blue water, he thought of the great city, with all its bustle and noise and excitement, and even fancied he could hear the sound of the church bells, down in the depths of the sea.

In another year the second sister received permission to rise to the surface of the water, and to swim about where she pleased. She rose just as the sun was setting, and this, she said, was the most beautiful sight of all. Though the beauty of dry land held some interest for Baby, her descriptions of the golden sky, with violet and rose-colored clouds, soon began to bore him. What use was it talking excitedly of these colors and sights that she could not describe, floating above her, and moving more rapidly than the clouds a flock of swans flying towards the setting sun? He want to hear of excitement; he wanted to hear of the town. So while she spoke of rose-tinted water and the way she had swam towards the sun as it was swallowed up by the sea, his attention had shifted fully to the sunlight filtering in from above.

It would be the same as this year the next. His third sister would be given permission to rise up out of the sea and she would see wonderful, indescribable sights, only half of which she would remember when it was her turn to tell her younger siblings what she had seen. The fourth would do the same, only worse, for she was the timid sort, and would likely vanish back below the waves the second she spotted a creature other than the birds of which her sisters and grandmother’s stories had taught her of. Perhaps the fifth would be different; like Baby, she was bold and brave. She spoke often of swimming up the river that split the earth when her time came to see the land above. From her Baby might hear of dogs and farmers and little children who could swim in the river without tails; by then, however, it would be too late. He would be a father. If he were ever to see dry land, it must be before that. Before nature betrayed him and the responsibility of ruling the Sea Kingdom rested on his shoulders. This he thought on many nights, staring up at dark shapes passing between him and the moon. He thought of the delight that his two eldest sisters had taken in the surface on their birthdays, and how now, as grown-up girls, they could go when they pleased, and the had become indifferent about the privilege. Perhaps he, too, could reach that state; his fingers traced the reversed scales of his egg pouch idly as he thought.

Perhaps.

Baby had less time than he had at first anticipated. For though he would not meet the mermaid to whom he would be mated for some time, his grandmother was eager to present him to the rest of the merfolk in the Kingdom, to showcase him as a proper merman. It was winter, and icebergs were beginning to form on the green sea; Baby watched the brief period of renewed interest that his two eldest sisters showed in the changing landscape above, looking after them, ready to cry, only merfolk have no tears, and therefore they suffer more. His grandmother had begun to fuss over his looks, trimming his soft blond hair out of his eyes, and grooming his eyebrows to utter perfection.

“Well, now, you look grown up,” said the old dowager, his grandmother; “so you must let me adorn you like your other sisters;” and she placed a wreath of white lilies in his hair, and every flower leaf was half a pearl. Then the old lady ordered eight great oysters to attach themselves to the tail of the prince to show his high rank.

“But they hurt me!” complained Baby, twisting to see the shimmering on his tail. Such a bother they would be when he swam!

“Pride must suffer pain,” replied the old lady.

Oh, how gladly he would have shaken off all this grandeur, and laid aside the heavy wreath! The red flowers in his own garden would have suited him much better, or better yet the perfumed flowers of dry land! All these thoughts tormented him as he lingered by the window that night. Baby did not want to think of the great feasts, and parties, and princely things that were expected of him in the next few weeks. He felt trapped, not just by the pinching oysters but also by his life.

“Get off—get off!” He shouted at them, quite surprising himself as his voice echoed in the lonely halls. The oysters themselves were frightened, and clattered to the floor. Some apology seemed necessary for that sorry heap; they were really such dull, unintelligent creatures, and so quick to follow a royal’s orders. Shame stopped him, and he darted quickly out the window, away from the oysters and the echoes of his voice.

As if by design of some greater being, a ship passed overhead at that moment. The dark shape rolled overhead, powerful and mighty. It was free—it would soon be gone.

There were so many reasons for Baby to ignore its siren call; his duty, his future mate, and the eggs he would carry. But he could not help himself: so he said, “Farewell,” and rose as lightly as a bubble to the surface of the water.


	2. Two Princes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two princes meet. One mer, and one human...and beautiful...and perfect...and egg pouch-less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OTOT drinking game! Take a shot every time you read "egg pouch".

The sun had just set as he raised his head above the waves; but the clouds were tinted with crimson and gold, and through the glimmering twilight beamed the evening star in all its beauty. For a very long moment the merman was distracted, struck by the sight, the feel of having his head above water. He gasped in a lungful of air; the lungs that were practically vestigial in his species filling and expanding for the first time, the gills on the side of his neck slipping shut. The sea was calm, and the air mild and fresh. Baby cast his gaze around almost frantically until he saw it again; a large ship, with three masts, lay becalmed on the water, with only one sail set; for not a breeze stiffed, and the sailors sat idle on deck or amongst the rigging. There was music and song on board; and, as darkness came on, a hundred colored lanterns were lighted, as if the flags of all nations waved in the air. The little merman swam close to the cabin windows, showing no fear; and now and then, as the waves lifted him up, he could look in through clear glass window-panes, and see a number of well-dressed people within. Among them was a young prince, the most beautiful of all, with large blue eyes; he was nineteen years of age, and his birthday was being kept with much rejoicing. The sailors were dancing on deck, but when the land prince came out of the cabin, more than a hundred rockets rose in the air, making it as bright as day. Baby was so startled that he dived under water; and when he again lifted his head above the waves, it appeared as if all the stars of heaven were falling around him, for he had never seen fireworks before. Great suns spurted fire about, splendid fireflies flew into the blue air, and everything was reflected in the clear, calm sea beneath. The ship itself was so brightly illuminated that all the people, and even the smallest rope, could be distinctly and plainly seen. And how handsome the young prince looked, as he pressed the hands of all present and smiled at them, while the music resounded through the clear night air. 

 

Too delighted was Baby by these sights to see the struggle behind each moment of human contact for the prince, even when he allowed a scowl to flicker across his face when the second mate dared to hug him. No; all the little merman saw was the handsome curves of his statue made flesh, the man who had inspired the artwork so beloved to him. The more he looked the less he saw, until dark, heavy brows and a serious jawline were lost on him; all he could see was that the human prince was by far more beautiful than the statue, or anything else that he had ever seen. 

 

If it were a mere fascination with ships, the other merfolk of the Sea Kingdom would have understood. Often enough, upon catching Baby out of his nest and gazing up at ships sailing above, Baby’s sisters would nod knowingly and watch with him for a while. Ships called to mermaid on some deeper level whose meaning had long ago been lost. Merfolk, even the mermen, had more beautiful voices than any human being could have; and before the approach of a storm, and when they expected a ship would be lost, they swam before the vessel, and sang sweetly of the delights to be found in the depths of the sea, and begged the sailors not to fear if they sank to the bottom. But the sailors could not understand the song, they took it for the howling of the storm. And these things were never to be beautiful for them; for if the ship sank, the men were drowned, and their dead bodies alone reached the palace of the Sea King.

 

It was very late; yet Baby could not take his eyes from the ship, or from the beautiful prince. The colored lanterns had been extinguished, no more rockets rose in the air, and the cannon had ceased firing; but the sea became restless, and a moaning, grumbling sound could be heard beneath the waves: still the little merman remained by the cabin window, rocking up and down on the water, which enabled him to look in. After a while, the sails were quickly unfurled, and the noble ship continued her passage; but soon the waves rose higher, heavy clouds darkened the sky, and lightning appeared in the distance. A dreadful storm was approaching; once more the sails were reefed, and the great ship pursued her flying course over the raging sea. The waves rose mountains high, as if they would have overtopped the mast; but the ship dived like a swan between them, and then rose again on their lofty, foaming crests. To a naïve Baby this appeared pleasant sport; not so to the sailors. At length the ship groaned and creaked; the thick planks gave way under the lashing of the sea as it broke over the deck; the mainmast snapped asunder like a reed; the ship lay over on her side; and the water rushed in. Now it was clear to Baby that the crew were in danger; even he himself was obliged to be careful to avoid the beams and planks of the wreck which lay scattered on the water. At one moment it was so pitch dark that he could not see a single object, but a flash of lightning revealed the whole scene; he could see every one who had been on board excepting the prince; when the ship parted, he had seen the boy who fascinated him so sink into the deep waves, and at first he was glad, for he thought the prince would now be with him; and then he remembered that human beings could not live in the water, so that when he got down to the Sea King’s palace he would be quite dead. But he must not die. So Baby swam about among the beams and planks which strewed the surface of the sea, forgetting that they could crush him to pieces. Then he dived deeply under the dark waters, rising and falling with the waves, glad to be free of the decorative oysters, till at length he managed to reach the young prince, who was fast losing the power of swimming in that stormy sea. His limbs were failing him, his beautiful eyes were closed, and he would have died had not the little merman come to his assistance. Baby held his head above the water, and let the waves drift them where they would.

 

His weight as the current dragged at his clothing was almost comforting to Baby, who though nothing of tugging off troublesome boots and a regal jacket that was waterlogged. He could feel the warmth of the land prince’s skin against his, and a steady thumping if he were to place his hand over the young man’s heart. When his head came to rest on Baby’s shoulder the merman made no move to adjust his hold; quite without meaning to, and with the silly sentimentality common not just to young human girls but all sentient creatures kept cooped up at home, he had fallen in love. The easy affection that overcame him when he tilted back the land prince’s head to inspect his face came not just from physical perfection, or whim; the way his heart had raced as the ship sunk stayed with him. The surface was indeed dangerous, but thrilling for the same reason.  
In the morning the storm had ceased; but of the ship not a single fragment could be seen. The sun rose up red and glowing from the water, a sight the likes of which Baby had never seen. But quickly he turned his attention from the new sight to the precious cargo in his arms. The sun’s beams brought back the hue of health to the human prince’s cheeks; but his eyes remained closed. The merman kissed his high, smooth forehead, and stroked back his wet hair; he seemed to Baby to have become the marble statue from the castle garden, and he kissed the human again, and wished that he might live. Presently they came in sight of land; lofty snow-covered mountains and beautiful green forests that his sisters had told him about. There were buildings in the distance, but Baby could not tell for sure what they were. One of them, the biggest of all, appeared to be a castle. Orange and citron trees grew in the garden, and lofty palms lined the street before its doorway. In its shadow the sea formed a little bay, in which the water was calm, but still deep; so here Baby swam with the handsome prince to the beach, which was covered with fine, white sand and shells but otherwise deserted. He lay the human there in the warm sunshine, taking care to raise his head higher than his body.

 

Baby indulged himself for a moment, in sight of that beauty, to trace the prince’s face again, with his eyes now that it lay out of reach. The sea seemed to tug at his fins, to call him back to safer depths, but still he lingered. The human’s legs were within reach and he touched these almost reverently. Aside from shucking the heavy boots off during the storm, Baby had never seen legs, except in drawings or the bodies that the sea brought them. For all their deceiving slenderness they were strong like a tail also. Reverent hands moved with frank curiosity, tracing a finger down the human’s insole, feeling strong thighs, and an innocent grope of what lay between them, so different from the smooth and internal sex organs of merfolk. The merman wasn’t even aware what it was, except for different. This exploration may have gone further if bells had not sounded in a large white building, and a number of young girls came streaming towards the beach. 

The merman swam out further from the shore and placed himself between some high rocks that rose out of the water; he watched to see what would become of his poor prince. He did not wait long before he saw a young girl approach the spot where he lay. She seemed frightened at first, but only for a moment; then she ran off. When she returned it was with a number of people, and the merman saw that the human came to life again, and smiled upon those who stood round him. But to Baby he sent no smile; he knew not that the merman had saved him. This made Baby very unhappy, and when the prince was led away into the great building, he dived down sorrowfully into the water, and swam back to his father’s castle with his head abuzz. Prince Saul. The adult humans the little girl had brought had called his human that.

 

He had always been moody and hotheaded, and now he was more so than ever. His sisters asked where he had been, and the eldest, seeming to suspect the truth, had pulled him aside to find what had occurred on his first visit to the surface; but he would tell them nothing. Many an evening and morning did he rise to the place where he had left Prince Saul. He saw the fruits in the castle garden ripen till they were gathered, the snow on the tops of the mountains melt away; but he never saw the human prince, and therefore he returned home, always more sorrowful that before. It was his only comfort to sit in his own little garden, and fling his arms round the beautiful marble statue which was like the prince; but he gave up tending the flowers, and they grew in wild confusion over the paths, twining their long leaves and stems roung the branches of the trees, so that the whole place became dark and gloomy. Sometimes, in the secret seclusion of the willow’s branches, he would kiss the statue on the mouth.  
At length he could bear it no longer, and told his eldest two sisters all about it. It was not seen as in any way unusual that Baby should fixate on a male of that species, she agreed readily. “Humans are of a backwards nature. Their women both make and carry their eggs. I often find that their females are most attractive to me for that reason alone.” Tossing her long blond locks in the current, she leaned forward with a mischievous smile. “Not than a man could fill your egg pouch…but is that what you imagine?”

 

Mortified at the thought of allowing his egg pouch to govern his thoughts, Baby sulked and refused to speak to his eldest sister for the rest of the day. But from her the others heard the secret, and very soon it became known to two mermaids whose intimate friend happened to know where Prince Saul was. She had also seen the festival on board the ship, and told them where the prince was from, and where his palace stood. The building that Baby had taken for a human castle was in fact only a nearby church.

 

“Come, little brother,” said the two eldest princesses; then they entwined their arms and rose up in a long row to the surface of the water, close by the spot where they knew the prince’s palace stood. It was built of bright yellow shining stone, with long flights of marble steps, one of which reached quite down to the sea. Splendid gilded cupolas rose over the roof, and between the pillars that surrounded the whole building stood life-like statues of marble. Through the clear crystal of the lofty windows could be seen nible rooms, with costly silk curtains and hangings of tapestry; while the walls that were covered with beautiful paintings which were a pleasure to look at. But the only pleasure upon which Baby wished to gaze was the prince; it was only after a frantic search that made his two sisters’ peals of laughter ring out over the sea, did he set eyes on what he had been looking for.

 

Now that he knew where Saul lived, he spent many an evening and many a night—so long as he could escape the palace unnoticed—on the water near the palace. He would swim much nearer the shore than any of the others ventured to do; indeed once he went quite up the narrow channel under the marble balcony, which threw a broad shadow on the water. Here he would sit and watch the young prince, who thought himself quite alone in the bright moonlight. Baby saw him many times sailing in a pleasant boat, with music playing and flags waving. On many a night, too, when the fishermen, with their torches, were out at sea, he heard them relate so many good things about the doings of the young prince, that the merman was glad that he had saved his life when he had been tossed about half-dead on the waves. And he remembered that Saul’s head had rested on his chest, and how heartily he had kissed him; but the human prince knew nothing of this, and could not even dream of the merman who had saved his life. Baby grew more and more fond of human beings, and wished more and more to be able to wander about with those whose world seemed to be so much larger than his own. He wanted to see the great wars that Prince Saul’s intervention had ceased, and the great nations that had staged them. He wanted to know why people said the old king had been mad, and longed to hear the end of so many of the fisherman’s stories that drifted out of hearing as they returned to the docks after a night of work. There was so much that he wished to know, and his sisters were unable to answer all his questions. Then he applied to his old grandmother, who knew all about the upper world, which he rightly called the lands above the seas.

 

“If human beings are not drowned,” asked the little merman, “can they live forever? Do they never die as we do here in the sea?”

 

“Yes,” replied the old lady, “they must also die, and their term of life is even shorter than ours. A third of the time given to us, a mere hundred years, sometimes less.” 

 

“Why can they sail over the sea in their boats, and also live on land, while we only have the sea?” asked the little merman mournfully; “I would give gladly all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one of their lifetimes, and live in both worlds.” And I would live a fraction of that, he thought, to live beside the human prince, to share his exciting life.

 

“You must not think of that,” said the old woman, who would have been truly horrified to know what her grand-son really was thinking; “we feel ourselves to be much happier and much better off than human beings.”

 

“So I shall die,” said Baby, “a prisoner to the sea, and to fatherhood?” Again his fingers brushed the untouched egg pouch, and he wondered idly what Prince Saul had in its place.

 

“No,” said the old woman, “you shall be free here, under the waves. Your fish’s tail, which amongst us is considered so beautiful, is thought on earth to be quite ugly; they do not know any better, and they think it necessary to have two stout props, which they call legs, in order to be handsome. They fear and oppress their women because producing children is a rather one-sided task for them. Someday you’ll see how truly fulfilling the role nature has given you can be. A merman is never truly happy without a clutch of eggs.”

 

Baby sighed, and looked sorrowfully at his fish’s tail, the reverse scales of his egg pouch, and thought of what he had felt between Prince Saul’s human legs. “Let us be happy,” said the old lady, “and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to live, in all the waters of the world, which are really quite long enough; plenty of room for raising a family. You will be pleased, I guarantee it—the right mermaid will make you a happy merman. You may meet several possible candidates tonight. This evening we are going to have a court ball.”

 

It is one of those splendid sights which we can never see on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the large ball-room were of thick, but transparent crystal. May hundreds of colossal shells, some of a deep red, others of a grass green, stood on each side in rows, with blue fire in them, which lighted up the whole saloon, and shone through the walls, so that the sea was also illuminated. Innumerable fishes, great and small, swam past the crystal walls; on some of them the scales glowed with a purple brilliancy, and on others they shone like silver and gold. Through the halls flowed a broad stream, and in it danced the mermen and the mermaids to the music of their own sweet singing. No one on earth has such a lovely voice as theirs. Baby sang more sweetly than them all. It was not only expected of him, but the result of natural talent. The whole court applauded him with hands and tails; and for a moment his heart felt quite gay, for he knew he had the loveliest voice of any on earth or in the sea. But he soon thought of the mermaids judging his singing as a qualification for being their mate, for he could not forget the true purpose of this event, nor his charming prince; therefore he crept away silently out of his father’s palace, and while everything within was gladness and song, he sat in his own little garden sorrowful and alone. When he heard the bugle sounding through the water, he thought—“He is certainly sailing above, my beautiful prince, whose lips I should have kissed with the same fervor I kiss this statue with! I will venture all for him, and while my sisters are dancing in my father’s palace, I will go to the sea witch, of whom I have always been so much afraid, but she can give me counsel and help.”


	3. Abigail the Sea Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby goes to visit the sea witch, and here's where the story changes... "Sell my voice? NEVER!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here my writing starts to outnumber Hans Christian Anderson's contributions. I try to stay in the same tone he wrote, which explains the detached approach towards actions scenes. (He was more of a landscape man himself)

And so Baby went out from his garden, and took the road to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the sorceress lived. He had never dared travel that way before: neither flowers nor grass grew there; nothing but bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool, where the water, like foaming mill-wheels, whirled round everything that it seized, and cast it into the fathomless deep. Through the midst of these crushing whirlpools the little merman was obliged to pass, to reach the dominions of the sea witch Abigail; and also for a long distance the only road lay right across a quantity of warm, bubbling mire, called by the witch her turfmoor. Beyond this stood her house, in the center of a queer forest, in which all the trees and flowers were polypi, half animals and half plants; they looked like serpents with a hundred heads growing out of the ground. The branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the top. All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon, and held fast, so that it never escaped from their clutches. The sea prince was so alarmed at what he saw, that he stood still, and his once-gay heart beat with fear, and he was very nearly turning back; but thought of the prince, and of the human world for which he longed, and his courage returned. He fastened his long flowing hair round his head so that the polypi might not seize hold of it. He then laid his hands together across his egg pouch, and then he darted forward as a fish shoots through the water, between the supple arms and fingers of the ugly polypi, which were stretched out on each side of him. Baby saw that each held in its grasp something it had seized with its numerous little arms, as if they were iron bands. The white skeletons of human beings who had perished at sea, and had sunk down into the deep waters, skeletons of land animals, oars, rudders, and chests of ships were lying tightly grasped by their clinging arms; even a little mermaid, whom they had caught and strangled; and this seemed the most shocking of all to the little prince.

 

He now came to a space of marshy ground in the wood, where large, fat water-snakes were rolling in the mire, and showing their ugly, drab-colored bodies. In the midst of this spot stood a house, built with the bones of shipwrecked human beings. There sat the sea witch, allowing a toad to eat from her mouth, just as people sometimes feed a canary with a piece of sugar. She called the ugly water snakes her little chickens, and allowed them to crawl all over her bosom. One nuzzles through her purple hair and fixed its sickly yellow eyes on the little merman.

 

“I know what you want,” said the sea witch Abigail; “it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty prince. You want to get rid of your fish’s tail, and to have two supports instead of it, like human beings on earth, so that the young land prince may fall in love with you, and that you may be rid of the burdens of your watery station.” She said no more of Baby’s egg pouch, though she stole glances at it while the little merman’s attention was elsewhere, filled with greed.

“How do you know what I’ve come for?” Baby’s voice was filled with unease and fear. He could not know that in her youth Abigail, too, had craved the love of Prince Saul—nor could he know of the crippling fear of being touched that plagued the land prince when all that lived in the palace knew and went out of their way to respect the prince’s personal space. The sea witch, unable to break the human prince’s phobia, had returned to the sea with a cold heart and a grudge. She pondered on this for so long and in such a still state that Baby advanced despite his far, reaching out as if to touch and rouse the sea witch from her stupor, stopped only by the wriggling and vile presence of the animals she was so besotted with.

 

And then the witch laughed so loud and disgustingly, that the toad and the snakes fell to the ground, and lay there wriggling about. “You are but just in time,” said the witch, neglecting to answer Baby’s inquiry; “for after sunrise tomorrow I should not be able to help you till the end of another year.” It was a shameless lie, for the sea witch’s magic was strong and governed by the moon, which renewed itself each month, but of course the little merman was ignorant of such things; it was merely a tool to make sure that Baby chose to go through with this without much time for thought. “I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and from them blood must flow, until they have grown tough. If you will bear all this, I will help you.”

 

“Yes, I will,” said the little merman in a trembling voice, as he thought of the human prince and the freedom of the human world.

“But think again,” said the witch; “for when once your shape has become like a human being, you can no more be a merman. You will never return through the water to your sisters, or to your father’s palace again; and if you do not win the love of Prince Saul, so that he is willing to love you with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join your hands that you may be married as is custom for a human man and wife, then you will surely perish. If you cannot get him to wed you within three cycles of the moon, your heart will break, and you will become foam on the crest of the waves.”

 

“I will do it,” said Baby, and he became pale as death.

 

“But I must be paid also,” said the witch, inwardly smirking in triumph. She knew that a union between two men was as likely as the sky marrying the ocean. Likewise, she knew that Prince Saul’s phobia would surely keep Baby from being able to coax the land prince into a kiss, let alone marriage. She would see the ruin of the Sea King through his loss of an heir, but would gain something _far_ more important for herself; she only had to go about it in the proper roundabout fashion so as not to raise the little merman’s suspicion. “and it is not a trifle that I ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the depths of the sea, and surely you believe that you will be able to charm the prince with it also, but this voice you must give to me; the best thing you possess will I have for the price of my draught. My own blood must be mixed with it, that it may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.”

 

There was some glimmer in her eyes then, the spark of greed, and it was fortunate for the little merman that he was so familiar with the emotions his egg pouch invoked, even in others of his own kind. Sensing rather than knowing for sure the witch’s true intentions, his hands curled instinctively in front of his egg pouch, and he spoke with a quavering voice.

 

“But if you take away my voice,” said Baby, “what is left for me? I _need_ my voice. No.”

 

“ _No?_ ” The sea witch’s wicked tentacles curled and lashed, and her skin turned a more sickly shade of purple. You’ll have your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely with these you can enchain a man’s heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment; then you shall have the powerful draught.” She was caught somewhere between true irritation and hope, a hope that she may be able to alter their deal.

 

Baby felt his tongue curl in his mouth, but swallowed his fear and shook his head again, lovely blond hair coming free. “I need my voice. Prince Saul was unconscious when he sank beneath the waves; he knows not that I helped him, or that I love him, or how dear and beautiful he is to me. I need my voice so that I may tell him all those things and more.”

 

“How sweet.” _How sickening._ “But there _must_ be some payment, surely you realize that. Blood is thick and far from cheap—blood magic must only be performed rarely, or the caster shall die. Do you ask me to give my life for your lark with a human? No?” For Baby was shaking his head, still looking pale. “You have other things to offer, I suppose; things you will not need on land. What of your egg pouch? Surely you would rather part with that and be a true human than give up your sweet voice.”

 

Baby would rather have offered his hair, or something else, but the sea witch spoke the truth. He could not expect her to cast blood magic for so small a price; Prince Saul was worth sacrificing an unwanted part of himself for, no matter how integral to his person. It could be a sign of his liberation, perhaps.

 

“It shall be, said the little merman.

 

Then the witch placed her cauldron on the fire, to prepare the magic draught.

 

“Cleanliness is a good thing,” said she, scouring the vessel with snakes, which she had tied together in a large knot; then she pricked herself in the breast, and let the black blood drop into it. The steam that rose formed itself into such horrible shapes that no one could look at them without fear. Every moment the witch threw something else into the vessel, and when it began to boil, the sound was like the death cries of a rabbit, or a theater immediately after a showing of The Fault in Our Stars. Baby shielded his eyes from the fearful colors and lights that burst from it, but when at last the magic draught was ready, it looked like the clearest water. “There it is for you,” said the witch, collecting the potion in a glass bottle from the world above and corking it. “but first you must pay.”

 

Baby neither approached her nor retreated, floating in her doorway like one deaf and dumb. This did not seem to bother Abigail, who selected a wicked-looking knife from among her belongings. Instinct began to scream at him to flee, but before he could the sea witch seized his arm and drove the knife just above the reverse scales on his tail.

 

The process was excruciating. It seemed to take forever.

 

When it was over, and the sea witch had used some spell to seal the gaping wound in Baby’s front, she wiped blood and scales off the blade of her knife with a tentacle and said almost as an afterthought, “for the pain.” A snap of her fingers and it began to fade. Not all at once, but in a minute Baby was able to straighten up from being doubled over. It seemed as if he were dismissed; Abigail was bustling around collecting more ingredients, and wrapping what appeared to be a shimmering silver-green sheet in a length of torn sail.

 

“If the polypi should seize hold of you as you return through the wood,” said the witch, “throw over them a few drops of the potion, and their fingers will be torn into a thousand pieces.” But Baby had no occasion to do this, for the polypi sprang back in terror when they caught sight of the glittering draught, which shone in his hand like a twinkling star.

 

So he passed quickly through the turfmoor and the marsh, and between the rushing whirlpools. He saw that in his father’s palace the torches in the ballroom were extinguished, and all within asleep; but he did not venture to go in to them, for now he had made his choice and was going to leave them forever, he felt as if his heart would break. He stole into the garden, took a flower from the flower-beds of each of his sisters, kissed his hand a thousand times towards the palace as well as the mouth of his beloved statue, and then rose up through the dark blue waters. The sun had not risen when he came in sight of the land prince’s palace, and approached the beautiful marble steps, but the moon shone clear and bright. Instinct urged him back from the shallow water on the shore, but Baby allowed himself to be carried onto the shore by a wave and lay there, warm on the sand, his tail curled towards his back. Then the little merman drank the magic draught, and it seemed as if a two-edged sword went through his delicate body: the pain was immense. He fell into a swoon, and lay like one dead. 

 

 

 


	4. Fascinating New Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So what if everyone thinks he's crazy, or that he's a she? Baby has penetrated the castle!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song mentioned is "House Carpenter"

When the sun arose and shone over the sea, Baby recovered enough to lift his head and felt a sharp pain; but just before him stood a pair or boots, attached to human legs. Back-lit against the sun, which made the sea prince squint, was the silhouette of the castle guard's shoulders and helmet. The latter he removed and knelt beside the bleeding creature, seeing not the flat chest but merely the doe-like eyes and long, golden hair...and the blood.

 

“Girl? Who has harmed you?” He fixed his coal-black eyes upon Baby so earnestly that he cast down his own, and then became aware that his fish's tail was gone, and that he had as pretty a pair of white legs and tiny feet as any little maiden could have; but he had no clothes, only the red stain of blood, so he wrapped himself in his long, thick hair as best he could.

 

The guard removed his coat to drape around Baby's shoulders, shielding the body he had not scrutinized before trying to coax him to stand. When forced to press the delicate soles of his feet to the sand Baby whimpered and wavered, so much so that at last the castle guard scooped him up as if he were a bride and proceeded to carry him towards Prince Saul's castle. All the while, he spoke, asking him who 'she' was, and where she came from, and Baby looked up at him mildly and sorrowfully with his deep blue eyes; but he could not speak. He may as well have sold his voice to the sea witch. The pain stemmed from his new legs, but the blood was all on and around the outline his egg pouch had once drawn. “Prince Saul?” He whispered, when again he could speak, while being carried through long corridors and past quite a few staring eyes. “Prince Saul?”

 

The castle guard supposed this girl had been attacked by some scoundrel and was delirious with pain. He carried Baby to the only place he knew of, the wing of the castle where his wife reigned supreme, as maid and mother to all the young women who worked within. The dark-haired woman took one look at the poor creature and bid her husband lay Baby in a tub sometimes used for the more delicate palace linens. The many girls of the palace—chamber maids, and cooks, and the girl who polished the silver—all mobbed around the basin, even as they were scolded and shooed and told to start heating water, or to find a change of clothes so that their visitor would not have to wrap herself up in hair and an old soldier's coat.  
  
“My name is Helen, child, what's yours?” She tutted as Baby tried to push her hands away from the blood. “I've birthed three daughters and nursed Prince Saul in his infancy, I know how to take care of a scrape. Let me see, darling, if it doesn't hurt too much.” Crisp white cotton bloomed with rosey spots as she dabbed at the blood with a napkin, but could not find the cut. An attempt to check lower, to see if some scoundrel had violated the girl's honor, was again thwarted by Baby.  
  
“What _has_ happened to you? You must tell me, now, and be brave. Even if it's quite nasty.” A girl holding a kettle of hot water from the stove giggled, ducking her head quickly when faced with Helen's scowl.  
  
“There was a shipwreck!” When Baby spoke, his voice was as crystal-clear and melodic as before, and it held all the girls in a thrall for a moment, even as more water was carried over, hot and cold, to balance out. Excitement made the pain not so great, “I...I've not been on my own, ever, and came looking for the prince...” As he spoke, Helen had eased her husband's coat from Baby's grasp, until it came away, revealing a less-than-female body. The attending girls shrieked, some with horror and some with mirth, covering their eyes and friend's eyes, giggling and peeking.  
  
Helen's shock registered for a moment only before she placed her hands on her hips. “All right, ye silly lot, clear out! All but you, Gabriela, for I know you've seen the like often enough. Get out and see to the evening meal! I'll attend to our guest, now.”  
  
“Now,” she said, watching Baby and his likewise fascination with the new equipment between his legs with disapproval. “Ye shan't be pulling on that in polite company. That's right, hands off. Now...will you tell me why you've come here? And why so lovely a maid as yourself is actually a little gent?”  
  
The one girl who remained, Gabriela, presumably, had blushed and retreated into the background still, but was summoned by a sharp clearing of Helen's throat. She approached the tub and picked up one bucket, finally meeting Baby's deep-blue eyes. “This will only be cold for a moment, I promise.”  
  
There was nothing more in Baby's nature than the cold waters of the sea, so he hardly minded the first cold pour of water, followed by warm, then cold, layer upon layer as the tub filled up and he was caught in his own little sea. The legs themselves felt the cold, though, and the heat, and the skin along them dimpled with gooseflesh. Baby wanted to play his fingers along this, too, but Helen didn't seem to mind near as much, once she'd washed the blood clean so that only a faint white scar could be seen around his belly.  
  
“I'm merfolk,” Baby said, for the thousandth time, sing-songing his voice to hear how the air carried instead of muting it.   
  
“So you've told us.” Helen had adopted the expression of a Fannibal watching anyone claim Hannibal Lecter's innocence. “But, pretty gent, do mermaids get pruney toes?” She pinched one big toe, not hard, and stood. “Done with that mile of hair, Gabriela?”  
  
“Yes, mother.” Gabriela had been rinsing and scrubbing Baby's long hair while he leaned back, but now she retreated as well, hands clasped behind her back. She was a vision, with the high cheekbones of her mother, but a mermaid's shiny gold hair. For that reason, Baby had not objected to her closeness, being reminded of his sisters back under the sea.  
  
Helen held out a soft, downy cloth, open for Baby to step into. “Come out and dry off, now. We'll get to the bottom of your story when you're properly dressed. And, perhaps, you'll allow me to sheer that delightful mane of yours to a more proper length.”  
  
“Oh, mum, no!” Gabriela protested, before Baby could speak, reaching out again to gingerly brush the dark gold tresses. “I quite like it. It suits he—him.”  
  
“Thank you.” Baby beamed back at her, standing and feeling sharp pains in those wrinkled little feet. Every step he took out of the tub was as the witch had said it would be, he felt as if treading upon the points of needles or sharp knives; but he bore it willingly, and stepped as lightly to Helen as a soap-bubble, so that she and Gabriela wondered at his graceful-swaying movements. He wrapped himself in the towel, shivering now slightly. “Why _do_ they do that? It's rather strange.”  
  
“Everyone's fingers and toes do that if you sit in the tub long enough. You're more likely to become a fish than the other way around.”  
  
“...interesting.” Baby inspected his hands on the sheet, then held them out to Helen, almost dropping the fabric in the process. “Look, though. Look! My fingers haven't, and never have done that.”  
  
Gabriela had given a little shriek when the towel almost fell, and again, Helen glowered at her. “Stop acting the fool. Now...boy...” She took those long, graceful fingers in her own work-roughened hands and turned them over, finding no sign of the near-hour they'd spent in the tub, nor any work at all, nails evenly shaped.  
  
“Baby.”  


“What's that, now?”  
  
“Baby. It's my name.” The sea prince then gave a little shrug, as pleasing and bashful a gesture as the servant girls' modesty. With long, flowing hair and delicate features, he really did look more lady than man, regardless of a flat chest and evident manhood. “Truthfully, it's Paul...but I was always the baby, back in the sea kingdom where I once dwelled.”  
  
So for a long time Helen was silent, and the judgment less in her eyes. For once, in her youth, she had seen the hunters lead from the forest behind her house a silver-white horse with an ivory horn on its head. It was struggling against the many ropes that bound it, and whinnying in fright when the hounds nipped at its heels. Dead, now, with the horn goblet that had been presented to Saul's father as the only reminder, and yet, the ability to believe in magic had not yet died in her soul.  
  
“Go, Gabby, and fetch the girls back. Tell them to say nothing to anyone else in the palace.” Once the girl was gone, she held clothing out to Baby, seeing that indeed he had very little idea of how to go about putting them on. The trousers she had fetched as a last minute seemed beyond help, so with a hesitation for moral questioning she held out a gown instead, one of Gabriela's own. “You say that your purpose here is to...?”  
  
“To marry Prince Saul.” Baby's head bobbed like a Funko, and even the name of his beloved upon his tongue caused him to sigh. “It's...strange, I know, but mermaids are so much like your human men...mermen are the ones who carry the children. This...what I seem to be...I still feel for him as a woman should.”  
  
“Then if that's what ye want...and you've no one else, in this whole wide world? Answer to she and her and you, girl. I'll keep my girls quiet, and I'm sure, having been the boy's nurse, that he will allow you to stay on in the castle for a time as his guest.” She smoothed the muslin sleeves, and touched Baby's cheek, looking at him first one way, then the next. Human, merman. Man, woman. “ _Pauline_ , as well, you shall be called...as for the rest, we shall see in time.”  
  
“Baby works just fine,” he said, giving in to temptation and spinning a little to watch the dress' skirt billow out. Helen watched this with a mixture of tenderness and reality, leading him to a chamber furnished comfortably, but small.  
  
“Baby, then, if ye must...I'll send Gabriela up to comb this hair for you, once she's done. But child? Don't get your heart set on marrying the prince. He's a good boy, but he's worn down over time, and saddened by his father's past. We _will_ take care of you.”  
  
Baby threw himself to the bed, not in an act of childish anger but for a dramatic sigh, a tendril of damp golden hair clinging to one cheek. “Ah, but my heart is set! It's fixed upon its goal and drowned at the bottom of the ocean. It is Prince Saul that I want...and Prince Saul I must have! Else the sea witch shall come and take back from me what she gave, and I will become sea foam, and love no-one.”   
  
“Sea witch?” Helen spoke in surprise, but didn't leave time for Baby to answer. In mere moments, she was gone.  
  
For what seemed like ages, Baby was left alone. For a while he picked at the frayed edge of the quilt, and for a while more he traced the patterns embroidered on its surface. He knew this story, about a woman who leaves her baby to go after her love at sea. But, alas...this Baby had left the sea to find his love on land. And, thus far, the quest had proved boring. He wanted to find Prince Saul. Somewhere in these halls, the handsome prince must be, right at this moment. He should have asked Helen, but she seemed so distracted by telling him to keep his hands away from what was between his legs.  
  
No one around now to do that, so it seemed as good a time as any. He hiked the skirt of the dress up to his bellybutton and eyed that strange organ. Curious and wide-eyed, he gave it a poke.  
  
It felt almost like tracing his egg pouch, to be honest, but softer. Poking it wasn't really much fun. The true fun came in grasping it and watching the thing wiggle like a fish, a boneless arm, or a spirited dancer.

 

He hummed to himself as he did, then outright sang, in a voice more beautiful than any heard above the sea. “Come in, come in, my own true looooove....” Wibble wobble wibble wobble.   
  
“  And have a seat by me   
Its been three-fourths of a long, long year   
Since together we have been   
  
I cant come in and i cant sit down   
For ive only a moments time   
They say youre married to a house carpenter   
And your heart will never be mine   
  
I couldve married the kings daughter fair   
And she wouldve married me   
But i have forsaken, her crowns of gold   
And it's all for the love of thee   
  
Now will you forsake your house carpenter   
And come along with me   
Ill take you where, the grass grows green   
On the banks of the deep blue sea...”  
  
“Keep playing with that and it's going to get right hard.”   
  
“Really?” Baby turned to Gabriela, who stood in the doorway, and glanced back down with frank interest at this...this _ thing _ that he had. “I should pull my skirts down, I suppose."  
  
“Indeed.” With a little laugh, Gabriela held up the comb she had brought with which to free him of any tangles or snares. “It's only proper. Come, sit in the chair, and I'll braid your hair when I'm done.”  
  
Baby obeyed, sitting cross-legged in a way that was not at all lady-like, but decent at least from Gabriela's position, though she wouldn't stop laughing at this strange boy who had come upon them. Only when Baby spoke did this laughter die. “Why didn't your mother send you away earlier, then, if these... _ things _ \--” He punctuated the word with a feigned crotch-grope, staring straight ahead at the wall. “Are not for a lady's eyes?”  
  
The tug of the comb and the rhythm did not cease, but there was no reply for over a minute. At last, the girl sighed. “Don't be frightened by her gruffness. She starts to 'ye' and 'yer' when she's mad. My mother knows that I've taken a lover. Such things are not approved of _ above _ the sea, little fish.”  
  
“It's not accepted down under,  _ believe  _ me. The only thing worse than getting egg-bound when you're not mated? Is letting whatever fertilized eggs there were go adrift in the sea. It's madness. It's  _ murder _ .”

 

“...you really are from out there, aren't you?” The tug of the comb became the steady pressure of braiding, and finally a silver comb being slipped into the top and a bow tied at the bottom. “You really do look like a girl...how is all this possible?”  
  
“It's so I can marry Prince Saul.” Baby turned in the chair now, not wanting another long silence like the until-summer HeAteUs all Fannibals were dealing with at the moment. “I love him. I _must_ tell him this.”  
  
When Gabriela looked away, Baby thought for sure he'd seen her eyes grow misty. “I really hope there's more here for you than him, little fish. Neither you, nor any human girl will ever marry him. The prince does not love like other men. You must know...he is the opposite of my lover. I love him, but cannot be with him. He could be with any girl, but will not. Marriage is very strict here. As strict as you say your father the sea king is.”  
  
“But I _must_ see him,” Baby insisted, tracing the lines of the gown and his hair while peering into the looking glass. He and Gabriela appeared to be sisters, ladies of a decent class. His heart wanted to see that as proof that he had made it this far, and could make it just a castle's distance more. “Abigail, the sea witch, says that if I don't marry him within six months—”  
  
“Abigail?”  
  
“ _Yes_ , Abigail, I've been repeating myself every time I—”  
  
“You don't understand—the prince has spoken of her!” Gabriela stopped herself in the process of making the sign of a cross. “Back when he was a very young boy. Everyone took them as nightmares, nothing more.”  
  
“They're the truth.” Baby pleaded, eyes soulful and lost, glimmering like the deepest depth of the sea. “Please.”

 

“I can arrange a dinner, I believe. Or, mother can. Just...never mind.”

 


	5. When Everything Works Out...But Doesn't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, good things happen to you...but they don't make you as happy as you thought they would.

Though Helen seemed to have managed to keep Baby's little—  
  
to be fair, six inches is fairly average

 

—secret, her stern words did not keep the servant girls from gossiping about the strange visitor, supposedly of wealth and royalty, come to the castle for the sole purpose of courting the _elusive_ Prince Saul Lecter. Such talk made Baby nervous, and likely the prince as well, but it seemed clear to those closest to the prince that it would not do to have a royal visitor clothed in the castoffs of a scullery maid. He was very soon arrayed in costly robes of silk and muslin, and was the most beautiful creature in the palace; who cared if he was dumb? He could speak and sing, read and write...each mistake and faux pas was taken in stride, until Gabriela took him on a tour of the kitchen. The girl had intended to show him the fancy dishes being prepared for their meal with the prince, to explain where each one was from and how each ingredient was collected, yet exotic fish and sea-greens were ignored in favor of simple, every-day objects that Baby did not understand.  
  
“What's that?” he wanted to know, pointing a delicate finger at a bubbling cauldron.  
  
“Ah!” With a pretty smile, Gabriela pointed to a pile of lobsters, claws tied shut, in a wooden trap on the floor. “We're going to be having lobsters as the main course.”

 

“No, that!” Shaking his long blond hair vehemently, Baby pointed again, lower, jerking his hand back sharply from the fire's heat.  
  
Gabriela tugged him back as he gave a little yelp. “That's a fire, and it _burns_. Keep your hands and anything else away. It's the same thing you see in a forge...I took you through the armory already, didn't I?”  
  
“A forge.” Baby pressed his lips together. “Isn't that what I have right here?” And, unashamed as ever, he grabbed his crotch through his dress.

 

“No, no, that's a term for what _I_ have between my legs.” For the life of herself, the girl couldn't stop laughing. “What you're _supposed_ to. Five minutes in the armory and already you've picked up their filthy mouths.” Seeing Baby's further puzzlement, she spread her hands. “See...it's called that, because you take that—” A not-so-discrete point at his crotch. “—your iron, and put it in a forge.”

 

“Oh.” The cook wandered nearby, and seemed to have an amused smile at the discussion, he presumed, between two young ladies. “What is the iron for?”

 

“Nothing!” Again, Gabriela's laughter was beyond Baby's comprehension. “Feeding a certain hunger, I guess.” With a little shrug, she turned to the chef. “Almost time for those lobsters?”  
  
“Not quite, girls...how about you try the soup first?”  
  
This led to another wide-eyed moment for Baby, pointing at a fork used to scoop chopped potatoes into the pot. “What's that?”  
  
Not certain the girl was being serious, the cook laughed and handed the fork over. “For feeding a certain hunger, like a forge...”

 

His amusement quickly faded as Baby hiked up his skirts to see how. With voice raised, Gabriela managed to recapture the fork, swearing the cook to secrecy and Baby to a less hands-on approach with the same loud determination her mother often used. There were no more near-misses before dinner.

 

The room they occupied was not the dinning hall, with high, vaulted ceilings, but rather a smaller room with a large fireplace. Still, it stretched to twice the size of Baby's own bedchamber back in the sea king's castle. A think, bearskin rug lay between the fireplace and the table, which could seat a dozen, with room still left over for entertainment during the meal.

 

Prince Saul, with his dark, brooding eyes, was seated at the head of the table. Helen sat on his right, and Gabriela and Baby to his left. Baby's eyes remained glued on him the whole time, regardless of the activity at the other side of the room.

 

Beautiful female slaves, dressed in silk and gold, stepped forward and danced before the prince and his royal guests: one danced better than all the others, and the prince clapped his hands and smiled at her. This was a great sorrow to the little sea prince; he knew how much more graceful he himself had been once, and he thought, “Oh, if he could only know that! I have given away my fins forever to be with him, and am still finding my feet.”

 

The slaves next performed some pretty fairy-like songs, to the sound of beautiful music. Then the little merman raised his lovely white arms, stood on the tips of his toes, and glided over the floor, and sang as no one yet had been able to sing. At each moment his beauty became more revealed, and his expressive eyes appealed more directly to the heart than the pretty dances of the slaves. Everyone was enchanted, especially the prince, who watched with wide, enraptured eyes. This creature sang to his soul, to his sorrows, and he felt for once not alone in the world but in the company of one who might understand...if only she weren't some empty-headed palace girl like all the rest!

 

Helen, who watched with a keen eye, spoke to the prince in a hushed voice. More than once, he rounded on her with complete disbelief in his eyes. Mermaid? _Man?_ Enchantments? But Helen was insistent, and as she had raised the prince at her breast he had no option but to stand and approach the little merman in the midst of his song. They saw eye-to eye, even though the sea prince did not wear the heels of most fashionable women at the time, and something in the set of his shoulders, yes...Saul could almost see the merman for what he was.

 

It took all the courage in the world for him to extend his hand as he had been instructed, though the invitation to dance had been trained into him quite readily. Baby, who was just beginning to understand the effort behind that smile, took the hand lightly, and allowed himself to be held on Saul's terms. Yes, a part of him missed that intimate, full-body embrace from when he had carried the prince to safety, but now he could look into those deep brown eyes and know that Prince Saul was seeing him, truly seeing him.  
  
“Pauline?” Saul's voice wavered a little, loaded with doubt. “...may I have this dance?”  
  
“Baby. And yes...you may.” He danced again quite readily, to please Saul, though each time his foot touched the floor it seemed as if he trod on sharp knives. Nothing could ease that feeling, he found, but time and bathing them in the cool ocean waters under Prince Saul's window, where he had often lingered in his true form, watching the silhouette move against the prince's curtains. 

 

Upon finishing dinner Baby had been given permission to remain in the castle for the duration of his stay, though Prince Saul did not seem half certain that what Helen told him about Baby's true nature was fact. He ordered velvet and good fabrics to adorn his guest, and for all the kingdom to know the version of the truth that Helen suggested, so that no rumors could start to form and fester under the surface of a happy kingdom.  
  
“He said nothing of marrying me,” Baby said morosely, turning to Gabriela, who likewise was bathing her legs in the sea, skirt up to her thighs.   
  
On and off, when not laughing at Baby, Gabriela had seemed sad and thoughtful. Here, bathed in the silver light of the moon, was one of those moments. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and shrugged. “You could tell, when he danced with you, that he doesn't like to be touched. Not by anyone. And moreover...I don't think he believes half of what mother told him about you. She's always so serious. The type who will never find jokes about Titanic's floating door scene, no matter how many years it's been. And suddenly she's speaking about fairytales and magic. You're her unicorn...the one she saw when she was little, though everyone knows there _are_ no such things as unicorns. He thinks she's finally snapped from the after-effects of Mizumono.”  
  
“Then how am I going to convince him?” He kicked his legs as the waves lapped at them. He missed this...the cool feeling of the saltwater. His sisters. Even his father and stern grandmother. If he lost sight of why he'd come here...what he'd given up... His fingers traced the egg pouch through his dress lightly, a distant little tug at his heart.  
  
“Keep doing what you're doing, little fish. Flash your iron at him sometime. Then he'll have to believe.” She laughed, but just once. “Well...we'll see. It's only a matter of time. And if we don't...you _do_ have family to go back to, don't you? Friends?”  
  
Baby shook his head. “This is my only chance. If I don't marry him in six months, I won't have held up my end of the bargain with the sea witch.”

 

xxx

 

“He really sounds sincere, mum. We _have_ to try.”  
  
“You think I'm not trying?” Apparently, Helen and Gabriela believed Baby to be asleep as they gathered dust items from the long-closed room he would be staying in, meaning to clean them up. “Child, I'm doing me very best. For _both_ of them. Keep in mind, I raised that boy like he was your own brother.”  
  
“Aye, I know mother, ye don't have to remind me.”

 

“Don't 'aye' and 'ye' me, girl, I know you're poking fun.” There was a disgruntled noise, and the flap of the curtain as it settled to the floor. “...our guest tried to eat lobster with a comb today.”

 

“He thought it was a dinglehopper.”

 

“A _what_?”  
  
“That's what he calls—”  
  
“Oh, never mind. And _she_. It should always be she. If we _do_ pull this off, that's how we'll manage.” They worked for a bit longer, and then there was silence. Baby rolled over onto his back and sighed. He'd been up hoping to have a little time to himself, but he was no longer in the mood for carpentry. He'd met the prince. But he seemed so cold!  
  
And something was wrong with Gabriela. He could hear it in her voice, in her movements. Helen suspected as well. Only six months to marry the man of his dreams, but Baby was finding himself easily sidetracked by the plights of his new friends.

 

 


End file.
